It is often desirable for companies to provide print device product support or management from a location that is remote from that of the print device itself. A method for managing digital printers and servers via a network is found in U.S. Pat. No. 7,187,461. Sometimes, such support may be administered by a call center that receives and transmits requests or items of monitored data. Often a call center is operated by a business or company and is used to administer incoming product support or answer inquiries from a client. A call center agent may directly respond to issues raised by the calls or data. Alternatively, service representatives may be dispatched or assigned to handle the issues at a client location.
Remote support representations may want to modify one or more settings or features of one or more printing devices within a client's firewall. However, it is typically difficult for the call center agent to directly interact with the client's printing device because the agent may not be able to retrieve information from inside, or pass new settings, functions or other data through, a company's firewall.
Often when a printing device inside a firewall needs to be upgraded, a hosted server may only upgrade the printing device after obtaining permission from the company's firewall administrator. In order for the remote agent to access the printing device from the hosted server, the company's firewall administrator must reconfigure the company's system to permit the external hosted server to interact with the printing device. Alternatively, in order for a remote call center agent to access information about the printing device, the call center agent would have to dispatch a service agent to the client's site.